When she was named marketing vice president of Anheuser-Busch, Alissa Heinerscheid explained in a recent podcast interview, “I had a super clear mandate: We need to develop and take this incredibly iconic brand to the next level.” To do that, she said, “means a campaign that’s really inclusive.”
But the limits of that mandate, and of how Anheuser-Busch defined “inclusive,” became clear Friday, when the company announced that Ms. Heinerscheid and her boss, Daniel Blake, were on leave following a wave of right-wing outcry over a Bud Light deal. marketing campaign involving the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The backlash and ensuing scrambling is a lesson in the new troubled politics of corporate America. Over the past decade, big business has indulged in liberal social policies that are increasingly anathema to their longtime Republican Party allies and the consumers who vote for them.
This month’s trials of Bud Light have underlined how difficult it is to bridge that gap. Ms. Heinerscheid’s efforts reflected the company’s aspirations to erode market share among consumers in mostly liberal urban areas for years. Ms Heinerscheid did not respond to a request for comment.
The resulting furor, however, has led to double-digit sales declines in rural markets in the red states, where a broader revolt against transgender rights has become central to Republican politics.
“They’ve stepped into a polarized America,” says Benj Steinman, the editor of Beer Marketer’s Insights, an industry publication. “They’re at the center of the culture wars in a way no company would want to be.”
On April 1, Ms. Mulvaney posted a video to her Instagram account showing a custom Bud Light can featuring her face, which brand marketers had sent her as part of a March Madness promotion. A backlash and a boycott quickly followed, driven by conservative media outlets and personalities such as the musician Kid Rock, who posted an expletive-laden video on Instagram of himself gunning down several cases of beer with a submachine gun.
Sales of Bud Light, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s largest brand, fell 17 percent in value in the week ending April 15, compared to a year ago, according to an industry report. In a statement about the executives on leave, Anheuser said: “We’ve made some adjustments to streamline the structure of our marketing function to reduce layers so that our most senior marketers are more closely connected to every aspect of our brands’ operations. .”
Despite the decline, Anheuser-Busch stock has barely wavered and is currently near its year-to-date high, suggesting investors may think the storm will be short-lived.
“Companies will not end the standard business practice of including diverse people in advertising and marketing because a small number of loud, fringe anti-LGBTQ activists are making noise on social media,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of the LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD, said in a statement. She noted that a 2020 study the organization conducted with Procter & Gamble found that three-quarters of non-LGBTQ Americans liked seeing LGBTQ people in ads.
The Bud Light boycott has also divided prominent Republicans and campaign organizations. Many have rushed to the last front in the culture war, including several Republican 2024 presidential candidates.
Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate who has campaigned against criticism of corporate progressivism, has raised money with the Bud Light episode, which he says is symbolic of how corporate executives are increasingly embracing liberal cultural values that run counter to on their company’s consumers. “I think what Budweiser did would otherwise be inexplicable had it not been for a corporate culture created by some of those top-down forces in American life,” he said.
In an interview this month with right-wing media personality Benny Johnson, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to soon enter the 2024 presidential race, said: “It’s part of a bigger picture where corporate America is trying to make our country , trying to change the policy, trying to change the culture.”
But others in the party have urged restraint in light of Anheuser-Busch’s Republican campaign donations that led LGBTQ rights supporters to boycott the company just two years ago.
On his podcast this month, Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former president, warned against “destroying an American and iconic company for something like that,” criticizing the Bud Light campaign but reminding his audience of the history of the parent company of donations to Republican political parties. campaigns.
After posting an online fundraiser mocking Bud Light this month, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which received more than $464,000 in donations from Anheuser-Busch last year, took down the page within minutes, The Daily Beast reported.
The degree to which the backlash against Bud Light has impacted the company’s sales is unusual. Other companies that have been the target of anger on the right over race and gender politics in recent years, such as Nike and Disney, or on the left over support of former President Donald J. Trump and his stolen election claims, such as Goya Foods, have paid little for by the consumer.
Americus Reed, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School who studies the intersection of social movements and consumer behavior, says that for many companies that have openly embraced racial justice and LGBTQ rights in recent years, such gestures reflect a realize that “it’s another way to differentiate yourself in a competitive market.”
He cited Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, which has built brand identity and loyalty over decades, in part through its roots in the hippie enclave of Burlington, Vt. to wear, and his liberal politics on his sleeve. “Then suddenly that bucket isn’t just cream and sugar, it’s something else,” he said.
But Anson Frericks, who served as president of Anheuser-Busch’s U.S. operations until last year, said the logic didn’t necessarily hold true for his former company: a colossal brand with a customer base historically more or less evenly split between the two sides. of the country’s deepening partisan divide, and with an identity more associated with Clydesdales, Americana, and humorous Super Bowl commercials than with social justice.
“There’s an element of authenticity to what Ben & Jerry’s does,” says Mr. Frericks, who now, together with Mr. to invest.
“When you have these big companies with a historic brand identity, it just doesn’t look authentic when they suddenly get involved in these social campaigns.” Anheuser-Busch, he argued, had “lost sight of the consumer.”
However, the company’s downturn has left it with few defenders.
“This was their chance to say, ‘We Doing stand with the LGBTQ community and especially the trans community,” said Stacy Lentz, the CEO of the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, the philanthropic foundation of the historic Manhattan gay bar.
Ms. Lentz also co-owns Stonewall Inn, which two years ago refused to sell Anheuser-Busch products on Pride weekend because of the company’s support of Republican lawmakers it viewed as anti-LGBTQ. She said the boycott had led to encouraging conversations with representatives from the company, and she was further encouraged by the promotion involving Ms. Mulvaney — and appalled by its withdrawal.
“They went after the younger generation,” she said. “But that’s very hard to do on a marketing level, to be all things to all people. And it failed miserably.”
